Killing felt good, satisfying, exciting. Very exciting. Empowering.
In no hurry, not concerned about being found, not concerned that the police might be coming, the assailant rose and went back into the study. A small lamp gave enough light to view the collection of ancient weapons mounted on the walls and in display cases. Knives and daggers, helmets and fearsome painted face masks of long-dead warriors from the other side of the world. And swords. Long, curving swords, some with elaborate scabbards and handles of carved wood, some with etched steel blades, some simple and plain. All of them deadly.
One of the swords was chosen and carefully lifted down to admire, and an idea formed and slithered through the killer’s mind like a viper. The blade hissed as it was slipped from its scabbard. The light shone down the length of it. The edge was tested against the pad of a thumb. A tiny bead of blood welled up and ran down the blade. The sight of it brought an almost sexual stirring within.
“Lucien?”
The woman’s voice was far away and tentative.
“Lucien? Are you down here? You should be in bed! You have that meeting in the morning.”
The voice was growing louder, coming closer.
The assailant went very still. Dead calm.
“Lucien? I hope you’re not eating something at this hour. You’ll get your acid reflux back,” she said as she came into the dining room. “Why do you have the door open in this weather? Everything is getting wet! What are you thinking?”
She came around the side of the table, stopping at the sight of her husband lying dead in a pool of blood.
“Lucien!”
She looked up and shrieked as Death came straight at her.
The scream died in her throat as the sword struck her in the side of the neck.
7
“So, I’m leaning toward Stench,” Kovac said as he walked into the cubicle with his third cup of office coffee.
He’d had the better part of a pot of the stuff at home, trying to rouse himself from a listless night’s sleep. Liska had given him a modern cup-at-a-time machine with all the lights and bells and whistles, but he turned his nose up at the fussy little flavored pods that went in it as “not real coffee.” He still used a Mr. Coffee machine from the last century. He and Mr. Coffee produced a brew that was capable of stripping varnish—not unlike the stuff that came out of the office coffeemaker.
Taylor looked up from his computer screen, green eyes bright and clear, no bags under them. “I’m sorry? What?”
“For your nickname. You need a nickname. I’ve been lax with that, I admit. It doesn’t usually take me this long. I’m off my game,” Kovac confessed.
“That’s okay,” Taylor said, going back to his work. “I don’t need a nickname.”
“Sure you do. We can’t just keep calling you Noob. It’s too generic.”
“That’s okay.”
“Did you have a nickname in the service?”
“Taylor.”
“That lacks imagination.”
Although, that might have suited him, Kovac thought as he looked at Taylor’s workspace. It was devoid of the ridiculous tacky and vulgar stuff Tinks had collected to clutter the place up—her coffee mug full of crazy pens, the cop cartoons printed off the Internet and pinned up on the walls, the voodoo doll of her ex, the framed photos of her kids. Taylor didn’t have so much as a Post-it. Boring. Finally, a flaw.
Kovac’s work area was a mess: binders and file folders in precarious stacks, notes and reminders hastily scribbled on scraps of paper and stuck haphazardly to the cabinet doors and the bottom of his computer screen. On the shelf above the computer a human skull sat with a fake severed finger in its nose hole and a cigarette clenched between its teeth.
He set his coffee mug on the desk—black with a ceramic gun for a handle. The taste went bitter in his mouth, and his mood soured. Michael Taylor was the modern detective in a nicely tailored charcoal suit and shined shoes, a business executive with a badge. His side of the cubicle could have belonged to a bank vice president. Kovac, on the other hand, felt like he’d slept in his clothes. He had nicked himself shaving. He looked like he was on the backside of a three-day bender, with his bloodshot eyes and the dark smudges beneath them, while his partner could have been a model for GQ magazine.
“I like Reek, myself,” Tippen said, wandering over from the giant whiteboard where all active cases were listed on a grid. “It has a medieval feel to it.”
“Maybe we could put this off until I do something more impressive than puke on a suspect who shit all over the interview room,” Taylor suggested.
Tippen shrugged. “We could, but seriously, how are you going to top that?”
“How about a double homicide with a samurai sword?” Elwood asked as he joined them.
“What are the odds of that happening?” Kovac grumbled.
“Better than even. The call just came in. You guys are up.”
*